Gone to Ground (15 page)

17

Nighttime again.

Christina lay in her bed, unable to sleep. She was too excited; so totally wound up that she wanted to jump up and down, not lie
quietly on her bed. But that wouldn’t be acceptable behavior and she didn’t dare draw attention to herself again. Not after today and the progress she’d made.

That captain was such a moron it was unbelievable. He completely underestimated Christina, although, even if she did say so herself, she’d put on a masterful performance. What an ass! She couldn’t believe that he actually fell for her map sorting, and the ‘accidental’ knocking of the maps to the floor. She’d had a moment’s concern when he’d started to help her pick them up; worried that he’d find the one she wanted. But no, he’d been dissuaded easily by her protestations. She was sure he never suspected that she’d slipped the Arizona map into her shirt. Then on top of it all, to offer her the only other thing missing from her plan. Access to her brothers.

Christina had been able to spend time with Nick and Ryan that afternoon during free time. There hadn’t even been extra supervision, proving to her that she’d convinced Rickards of her total change of heart.

Out on the play area Christina, Nick and Ryan retreated immediately to the sand pit, a convoluted depression filled with white sparkling sand. Apparently the hotel designers thought that the irregular borders made it look more high class than the average sand box.

Once there the three children began diligently constructing an enormous sand castle complete with turrets, draw bridge and moat. While they molded and patted the sand, Christina quietly filled the boys in on what had been happening with the escape plan, while they told her all about life on the boys’ side of the hotel.

Adding sand to a battlement worthy of any European palace, Christina spoke quickly in a soft voice, keeping an eye out for anyone who might be close enough to listen.

“I got the map this morning, guys. I haven’t gotten a chance to look at it yet, but I’m sure I’ll be able to find the canyon on it. It can’t be that far. I’ve been collecting food, and blankets and almost everything else we’ll need.

Ryan, head bowed over the tower he was shaping, glanced up at Christina out of the corner of his eye. “How far do you think it is, Christy? Will we be able to walk that far?”

“It’ll be a long walk, no doubt about it, Ry, about seventy or eighty miles. But we can do it, I know we can. It’s got to be better than staying here for the rest of our lives.”

“We’ve never walked that far, Christy,” said Nick, molding a bucket of sand to the top of another tower. “Where would we get water? How will be eat when we get there?”

“It’ll be okay, honest, Nick.” Christina assured her brother. “There’ll be houses and farms and such for part of the way, and we’ll carry canteens. Maybe we’ll even find bikes or something so we can move faster.”

The boys looked at each other and nodded. Nick looked at Christina, “Fine, we’re ready when you are, Christy. What else do we need?”

“Well, can you guys get some backpacks like the ones we carried at school? I’ve got one to carry my books in that the caregivers gave me when we got here.”

“Yeah,” Ryan said, nodding again more vigorously. “They gave us each a pack, too. We can use those to carry food.”

“We can tie our blankets on the bottom of them with shoelaces. Do you have hats? Boots or walking shoes?” The boys nodded assent to each of Christina’s list of items needed to go on the lam.

“I still need to gather some more food, and find some things like flashlights and such, but I think I know where to get those.” Christina said, using a stick to etch a stone pattern into the sides and floors of the castle. “I also need to find the best way out of town, so that we don’t get caught, but I’ve got an idea on how to do that. We could maybe be ready in a week or two at the most.”

“Good,” said Ryan, Nick nodding in agreement.

“We meet here every afternoon, okay? And see how we’re doing?” The boys both nodded.

“Christina! Christina Craigson!” One of the caregivers was standing in the doorway, hand shielding her eyes, looking around the play area.

“Yes, I’m here!” Christina called, waving toward the woman.

“It’s time to come in and get ready for the dinner service.”

“Coming,” Christina turned back to the boys. “I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon during free time. Remember, don’t tell anyone. Got it?”

“Got it.” Ryan said.

“Aye Aye, Chief.” Nick chimed in.

The three rose to their feet and the boys, looking at each other and grinning from ear to ear gleefully destroyed the castle, kicking it to pieces, laughing like loons the entire time. Christina looked on for a moment, shaking her head, but smiling, then turned and headed back into the hotel where she was scheduled to help at the dinner service.

That night in bed, Christina thought back over the day and contemplated her future.
Two weeks at the most,
she thought. It had to be soon. The rainy season was coming, and while that would make it easier getting water, it would definitely make it more difficult in other ways. The most important thing though, was that they would be out of here.

Two weeks at the most.

18

The next two weeks passed in a whirl of activity. Maggie and Mark worked hard to get the extra seeds O’Reilly brought back from the ranch into the ground. Seeds already planted were growing nicely, and the chickens had only broken into the garden once, de
cimating a row of potatoes and one of beans. However, because they were also decimating the grasshopper population, and producing nine to ten eggs every day, Maggie was inclined to forgive them.

O’Reilly went hunting and brought in several more deer and a large bull elk, efficiently rendering them into jerky and storing much of it in the cave hideout. Following a recipe he found in one of the books discovered in the camp’s house, he also began to tan the hides. As he explained it, a few hides would make valuable additions when winter came blowing down the canyon. The skins might also be the only thing that stood between them and nudity when they were no longer able to get material.

Several times O’Reilly took Mark or Maggie and rode up in the eastern pasture, checking on the cows they had turned out there. By his count, they had approximately twenty cows, fifteen calves, and three bulls. In talking over things with Maggie, he said that he felt that pasture could maintain that number nearly indefinitely as long as they didn’t just let the calves keep building up and either butchered them out in the fall, or turned them out into other pastures.

Lindy had been absorbed into camp life as though she’d always been there. She toddled around following one of the others and chattering non-stop about subjects of vital importance to a two-year-old, but largely unintelligible to everyone else. Which was fine since her conversations didn’t seem to require a second participant.

Strangely enough Lindy persisted in calling Maggie “mommy” even though O’Reilly said Maggie bore little resemblance to the dead woman. They didn’t know if at some point in the future Lindy would be able to tell them why, or if for the remainder of her life Maggie would replace her mother in her mind and memories.

It didn’t really matter, Maggie thought, since Lindy had taken root in her heart as thoroughly as any natural daughter would have done. She would give her life for either of her children, though she certainly hoped that this ultimate demonstration of maternal love wouldn’t be required of her any time soon.

Mark had fully embraced his new role as big brother, taking Lindy around the home yard, introducing her to all the animals. Gypsy fell immediately and deeply in love and would follow the little girl everywhere, much to Lindy’s delight. Jack was not quite as convinced, but even he would put up with Lindy grabbing his neck ruff and pulling his ears without protest. Especially if the fingers she was shoving in his mouth happened to be covered with something tasty.

Such was Gypsy’s devotion, that every night she began sleeping immediately outside Maggie’s door, trying to sneak in when Maggie wasn’t looking. If she did manage to gain entrance without being spotted, she would immediately go to the side of Lindy’s makeshift crib and curl up, remaining there the entire night, or until her trespass had been discovered and she was forcibly ejected.

Her position outside the door caused problems on more than one occasion when Maggie, leaving the room in the dark, tripped over her. After four or five nights of this, Maggie finally decided that it was better to have dog hair in the bedroom, than crack her skull falling over the pooch in the mornings. From that point on, Maggie would let Gypsy into the room every night when they went to bed, letting her out in the morning when they got up.

Throughout this time period, O’Reilly, Mark and Maggie worked diligently to provision the cave for possible use. Now that Maggie was acquainted with the conditions of O’Reilly’s escape from the Laughlin APZ, she understood and embraced his sense of urgency. However, to Mark she continued to act as though the cave hideout was a bit of a joke. Mark had lived with enough fear and anxiety these past few months. She didn’t want to increase it for no reason, and she still believed in the bottom of her heart, that the Enforcers would never find this hidden canyon.

The most difficult and worrisome aspect of hiding out in the caves was the difficulty in obtaining fresh water. Jerky, prepared correctly, could last an extremely long time. Likewise, once Maggie deciphered the instructions in the home canning manual O’Reilly brought from the ranch, and once the garden started producing, preserved vegetables and fruits would also last a long time.

And if not,
Maggie thought,
We can always leave the jars available for the attackers, and inflict a deadly level of food poisoning. We have to seize all the possible advantages here.
The image of Alice in
Alice in Wonderland
flitted through her mind, finding a jar marked “eat me.” Maybe if she left a loaf of fresh bread and a lethal jar of preserves on the table, she could take care of all their problems without firing a shot. They’d simply be able to capture the invaders as they squatted in the bushes, groaning from the cramps.

Water was a problem, though. It wasn’t as if it wouldn’t last. It might taste funny after a couple of days, but it would last, especially if they boiled it before putting it into the containers. It was those containers that were the problem. O’Reilly had brought back all the bottles and jars he could carry from the ranch. The collection was varied without a doubt, and many had to be saved for canning, but after sterilizing and filling all that remained and carrying them to the cave, they still only had about 10 to 15 gallons of water laid by for emergencies. For four people, two of them adults, that translated into less than a week, even if they rationed it carefully. If you added in the dogs -  and Maggie was pretty sure that Gypsy would be more of a liability left outside, pointing out their location, than brought in - the only conclusion Maggie could reach was that they needed a lot more bottles and they needed them fast.

A belligerent crow tore Maggie out of a blissful dream filled with hot baths, scented with sweet smelling bath salts.

A familiar mantra began to run through her mind,
chicken pot pie, roast chicken, fried chicken, chicken fajitas, chicken nuggets, chicken cordon bleu.
Another crow split the predawn air.
Chicken salad, sweet and sour chicken.
Yet another crow pealed forth eliciting other answering crows from the distant chicken coop.
The hell with it! I’m throwing the damned thing in the river to see if it can swim!
One more crow. Maggie groaned, gritting her teeth and clenching her hands. This was only the most recent of her plans to dispose of this particular rooster in a mental activity that had become a morning ritual during the past two weeks.

For some reason, Houdini, as Mark had named the rooster, simply would not stay in the chicken coop. They had hunted for all the holes, patching them diligently. Every evening they made sure that he was tucked up safe and sound when they shut the chicken coop door. Every morning, however, found him perched on the windowsill of the house, crowing to wake the dead, and anything else within a five mile radius.

They’d tried closing the windows at night, but the hot summer air and increasing humidity as they neared monsoon season, made sleeping uncomfortable. They simply had to leave the windows open during the night, ridding the house of any warm air built up during the day time, then close them tightly against the heat of the day. It was just their bad luck that Houdini had chosen that location to make his morning announcements.

They spent several days debating on what to do with the cocky black and white rooster. Maggie’s suggestion of inviting him to dinner as the main course was turned down flatly by O’Reilly, much to her surprise since he tended to dislike the chickens.

“If we kill off the rooster, the hens won’t be producing chicks, and eventually your flock will die out. How much sense does that make?” was O’Reilly’s reasonable explanation.

“We’ve got three roosters. How many do we need to produce chicks?” Maggie demanded. Thoughts of chickenacide ran through her mind in a wide variety of forms after the fourth morning of Houdini’s self-appointed alarm clock act.

“Yeah, we’ve got three roosters,” O’Reilly admitted. “But what if next week a hawk gets one, and a coyote gets the other. If you’ve already killed Houdini, then you’re out of luck unless we can find another abandoned chicken flock to raid.”

“But we’ve got a hen sitting on some eggs right now,” argued Maggie, refusing to give up her dreams of gory dismemberment. “There’s got to be a rooster in that batch.”

“You’ve heard of counting your chickens before they hatched, haven’t you?” O’Reilly countered, looking at her out of the corner of his eye. “I know that rooster is as annoying as hell, but it would be just plumb foolish to kill him off before you have a guaranteed replacement or two or three. I didn’t bring those damn things all the way on horseback just to have them die out because one rooster doesn’t know when to shut his beak.”

Maggie’s stormy face, and grumbled replay apparently amused O’Reilly because a huge smile flashed out from his deeply tanned face.

“Just every time he annoys you, think of all the things you’ll eventually be able to make when we have enough extra chickens to butcher. The roast chicken dinners, the fried chicken, the chicken sandwiches. If we don’t get a self-renewing supply of chickens, all of those things will be out of the question.”

Every morning since that discussion, when Houdini mounted his perch and greeted the morning, Maggie ran through a litany of her favorite chicken dishes, trying to convince herself that putting up with the rooster was worth it. It was a hard sell, though.

Lindy stirred in her bed, causing Gypsy to get up and check on her charge. Suddenly from another part of the house, Maggie heard a door slam open with a muffled curse, the sound of something hard flung hitting the window frame, and a strangled squawk. Getting out of bed, Maggie opened her door to find a half dressed O’Reilly pulling on the boot he’d apparently pitched at the rooster, muttering the entire time. Smiling, Maggie withdrew behind her door and got dressed, ready to start the new day.

That evening, after Mark and Lindy went to bed, Maggie and O’Reilly sat at the table, looking over the progress that they’d made in the recent weeks and discussing what still needed to be done in order to be ready for the upcoming winter. Maggie had difficulty thinking about cold and snow when they were sitting there in hundred degree temperatures, but O’Reilly assured her that the canyon could become bitterly cold in the winter, the result of cold air sinking.
Blasted laws of physics. Never work for you when you want them to and always do when you don’t!

For the past few days something had been nagging at the back of Maggie’s mind, but she hadn’t been able to put her finger on it. As they ran over their preparations, the food stored, or soon to be stored, the clothing, the animals and feed, she continued to be frustrated by that elusive feeling. Positive that it was something of vital importance, but also unable to identify exactly what it was.

“What are we missing, O’Reilly?”

“Things are actually looking pretty good, Maggie. If the garden and that old orchard keep going the way they are, and you actually manage to master canning, we should have a plentiful supply of vegetables and fruit to get by,” O’Reilly said, looking at the list in front of him. Maggie noticed how the lamp caught the deep red of his hair as he bent over the records, then was surprised that she had noticed something like that.

O’Reilly, apparently unaware that he, rather than their supply situation had become the focus of her attention continued. “Deer hunting has been good. We’ve still got quite a bit of ammo, though I’d like to have more. When the weather cools sufficiently, we’ll be able to butcher a calf. Hopefully the rains will be good this summer. Last winter’s moisture left us with plenty of grass, but this hot weather is starting to dry it out. A good monsoon will keep things going well enough to keep the calves fat. The chickens are producing well, although they’ll probably stop laying in the winter, especially since they have to pretty much find their own feed. We might try our hand at pickling eggs for the winter.”

“We need more jars, both for canning and for water.”

“Yeah. Things are pretty quiet right now. You don’t need me here as much since you’ve gotten pretty good at the chores that need to be done.” He grinned at her. “It’s probably time for me to head off to another ranch or camp and see what I can find.” O’Reilly’s mood shifted. He sighed and Maggie knew he really didn’t want to leave the relative safety of the Hideaway.

“Is there another ranch nearby?” she queried.

“Eagle Camp is off to the southwest about a day’s ride.” An indecipherable looked crossed his face and Maggie remembered him talking about Eagle Camp. It was where he grew up. A small camp on Eagle Creek, he’d said. Something had happened there that had killed his father and caused his mother to take him and his brother and sisters and move into town.

Since the night when O’Reilly had unburdened himself to her about his reasons for leaving the APZ, he had never again spoken of his previous life and before that it had only been funny stories about growing up in a camp. Countless times she wanted to ask him about the daughter he’d briefly mentioned, and about the mother of that daughter, the wife he never spoke about. Something about the character of the sorrow he’d expressed that night forbid her from probing where she wasn’t invited. This evening, however, she felt, if not an openness, at least less density to his reluctance to reveal himself.

“What happened at Eagle Camp? You mentioned that your father died. Was it an accident with a horse or something like that?”